


Asphalt

by megancrtr



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 05:15:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15856947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megancrtr/pseuds/megancrtr
Summary: Kent’s lungs rake in hot air as he runs, and the asphalt presses dry, quivering heat between his legs.





	Asphalt

**Author's Note:**

> i just, like, really enjoy this metaphor, but might've ran with it for a little too long...

—

Kent blinks awake to a soft tap on his shoulder. He rubs his eyes even though it won't help him see much more. The lights are off. The sun still set.

“You coming?” his mom whispers, and Kent stretches, lengthening his back and twisting. He reaches his arms back and his knuckles brush against the wall.

She pads away, and Kent rolls up, off the bed. He stumbles into shorts, a t-shirt. It takes him longer than it should to find socks he likes, hasn't been back long enough from billeting.

He makes it downstairs to his mom already wearing shoes and her hair pulled back. She waits for him to tug on socks, then shoes, before passing over an apple, some toast.

The first rays of the sun reach above the horizon as they start stretching and then start running. Kent's mom sets the pace, and they start easy, two laps around the neighborhood—it’s flat, quiet.

Kent's mind starts to wake up. His posture improves and his strides lengthen. Just a little. His feet hit the ground in a steady slap, slap, and he watches the apartments as they go by. Narrow, listing to one side. The paint peeling on some, fresh on others. Kent and his mom need to put a fresh coat on this summer. Sooner rather than later probably, before the heat turns too unbearable.

Even now, with the sun only just rising and bathing the homes in a mix of streetlight and sunshine, Kent can imagine the full heat of noon and its uncomfortable grasp. Kent sees curtains start to flutter and early commuters with coffee in one hand stepping into cars. He takes four quicker, larger strides and cuts in front of his mom to let an oncoming car pass. Kent nods at them, the same way he knows his mom does behind him. He slows for half a step, and they fall into a tandem again. Him next to her, but her breath and her steps asynchronous with his.

It's been a while, he realizes.

Since he's done this.

Since he's run for no purpose other than to run. It's not something he does with Jack. With Jack they always run to train. They sprint and heave and pound against the asphalt until their muscles spasm and their mouths fill with cotton.

“Breathe,” his mom reminds him as they turn out of their neighborhood. And Kent does. Letting out air he didn't realize he'd been keeping inside for too long. He deepens his breath, fills up his lungs, feels it in his stomach. They start up the hill, like they always do, and Kent's steps come easier despite the soft burn easing into his calves.

“Good,” she says, and he glances at her with a smile. Giddy at the praise, with the steady thread of oxygen he pulls into his lungs, pushes out with every fourth step. No burning lungs, no gasping breath.

His mom steers them into a small park, black top trail, but off the roads. He catches sight of squirrels and birds, and the past season, which usually clings so close to his bones starts to loosen. It's as if when the birds fly away, they take with them the weight of hockey, the crushing burden to beat everyone, beat Jack.

When they slow to a walk, three blocks from the house, he feels light. He feels himself. He grins. He is sixteen, preparing for his second season in major juniors, and ready for the rest of his life.

His mom looks over at him and smiles, hands settled onto her waist and taking long, slow steps, her chest heaving, like his.

—

Life gives Kent the unbearable heat of Las Vegas and dry, dusty asphalt.

He runs on it even though trainers tell him he should bike, should feel the burn through his thighs and into his core and build strength for hockey. Running, trainers tell him as they mark down his weight, burns calories he doesn't consume enough of. Running is not a good return on investment.

Kent knows a lot about return on investment. Too much. More than his trainers, he'd argue if anyone asked.

Kent knows what it means to make that return. He made it on hockey after he put in a decade and a half of time and energy and commitment and desire. He made millions on that investment, on hockey. He’ll make millions more.

Kent knows what it means to not make that return. He invested twice that in a relationship and then he—and then he lost that investment. He lost a friendship, a partnership. And all that time, all that energy. All those feelings. They went to waste.

Kent understands what return on investment is, and running—running instead of biking is an investment of calories he’s willing to make. For the way it drags his muscles and the way it consumes his breath. For the way he, his body, keeps moving forward no matter how he runs, because that is the only way to run. To keep going. Keeping going forward.

Kent runs in the hot, oppressive heat of a city in the center of a desert. He looks down and watches the steady pound, pound of his feet against the ground, his breath shuttering through him, his lips caked with want.

When he glances up, he catches glimpses of wavering heat, distorting buildings and figures far enough away. It curves them. Skyscrapers quiver. In those moments, reality slips between Kent's grasp, away from his eyes. And in those moments, Kent lives somewhere not here, not in a desert town where everyone lies and gambles and lusts. In those moments, Kent lives in a world with twisted buildings and faulty physics, and where he imagines people acted in different ways.

But both worlds share the dry, exhausting heat, and the parched cotton of his mouth. Kent’s lungs rake in hot air, and the asphalt sends up heat between his legs. It sits and clings and coaxes down sweat that evaporates before it hits the ground.

Kent ducks his head, breathes shallow and rough. He trains his eyes to his own feet—and the memory, the feeling, of his mother's steadying breath besides him evaporates, too.

—

Kent stumbles out of dress shoes and into tennis shoes. He bangs his elbow against a hotel bed, bruises his knee on a table. Someone claws at his arm, and Kent jerks out of their grip.

“Where're you going?”

Kent mouths “running,” until he’s sure he can say the word, and then shoves it out of his mouth. He can’t lace up his sneakers. He curses and slaps at hands that are trying to take his sneakers off. They can’t do it. He has to go.

He has to go.

Kent ties his laces into knots. He jerks at his dress pants until he gets them off. He finds sweatpants, pulls those on over his shoes. Gets tangled, but then gets free. He pats at his chest and doesn’t find a shirt on it. But that’s okay. He can do without one. It’s not too cold, not too cold—

Kent’s hands tangle into a sweatshirt that gets pushed against him, and he ducks into it. His arms swim around until he finds the sleeves.

Kent slams against the door, and then he fumbles until he staggers out of the room. In the hallway, his feet start to pick up the pace. He doesn’t want the elevator, doesn’t want to wait, stand. He goes to the stairs. He clutches the railing.

He stumbles out the emergency exit into the night air. He wills his feet to move under him, and for a brief, needed moment he’s running. His feet hit the ground, one after another. He moves forward.

He scrapes his palms against the ground. His knees sting against the sidewalk. He shoves himself to sitting. A hand wraps around his arm and tugs him up. It holds him up until Kent can align his feet with his legs with his body. “Thanks,” Kent wants to mumble, but his lips don’t work right. He breathes. Someone breathes next to him. Out of sync with him. Nothing's in sync with him anymore. 

After a moment, Kent starts to move forward again. One foot in front of the other. The hand doesn’t let go of his arm.

Kent picks up the pace, starts to run, his throat choking for air and his eyes tearing.

The hand doesn’t let go, and Kent keeps running, someone keeping pace by his side.

—

It’s too early in the summer, other teams are still playing hockey, and Kent is trying to run along a trail that’s more muddy than not. He tags behind Matthias, who ducks branches and slaps his feet down just right onto rocks and branches.

Kent has on new shoes that pinch his toes but shouldn't. He almost twists his ankle but doesn't. He ducks a spider web but stumbles over a twig. Frustration starts to constrict his lungs, his heart. He curses when his toe hits a rock and stings, when a branch drags across his face.

Matthias laughs. Kent scowls, but the corners of his mouth wind slowly upwards as Matthias blurts out he sees a butterfly. Kent doesn't see one, but he does catch sight of a salamander just in time. It's bright orange and smaller than a finger, and it meanders into the center of the path. Kent doesn't step on it.

The trail widens, and the blue blazes they're following become less frequent. Matthias falls into step with Kent, and the two of them slide into the same breath, the same step. Matthias doesn't say much, never does, but he smiles at Kent when Kent looks his way.

Kent likes the trail run, he decides as he and Matthias weave their way further through the woods, carefully maneuvering over, around, on branches, rocks, stumps. The air feels sharper here, fresher. If Kent breathes deeply enough, and he does now, he can taste the forest on his tongue. The musk from composting trees and life from growing ones. The hint of water evaporating, because here, unlike in the desert, everything is green. It feels like life. It feels alive, and Kent settles more solidly into the run, against Matthias’ side.

It isn't quite like being on ice, not like running with his mom. It's something else. Something more. The weight from the end of the first, miserable season lifts, and Kent's eyes brighten. His feet hit the dirt and press down on hard, jutting stones, and his legs move him forward.

—

Nothing is the same as the hot, oppressive heat of a desert summer. When the air rises from the baking pavement and slithers first around Kent's legs, and then flushes his chest, his face.

Kent’s lungs rake in hot air as he runs, and the asphalt presses dry, quivering heat between his legs.

It is hot in April. Hotter in May. Now it's three days into June, and sweat slides down his face, his spine. It soaks his clothing and drips from his chin.

Kent looks at the buildings as he passes, cacti out front and on balconies. His legs carry on under him, feet hitting the ground that will always be there for him.

Kent knows he should be sleeping, but his body ached to move. It's an off day between the final games of postseason. Most teammates are still sleeping. The others went to the ice.

Maybe that's where Kent should be, too. Searing plays deeper into his muscles and skating around and around and around the edges of the rink.

Instead, Kent breathes in Las Vegas' dry, chalky air. His lips grow chapped, and his eyelashes gather sweat. The expansion of his lungs is as steady as the slap of his feet against the ground.

And here, in the sun, on the pavement, he runs on and on and on.

—

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! [tumblr](https://megancrtr.tumblr.com/).


End file.
